Posted by robert maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t on 02/14/07 06:41

> From: "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tut.fi>
> Of course validation is of limited usefulness and can actually cause
> problems instead of solving them. But that's a different issue.

You're on the opposite side of the debate from the several people
who harass me that I don't know how to write Web pages (I'm an
idiot) because one or another of my Web pages fails validation.

> > The OP has thrown their bogus code at the validator and they've
> > receieved an error message that's basically useless.
> The useful thing is that the validator reports the existence of an
> error.

That's not very useful at all when the error is reported several
thousand lines after where the actual error happened.

It should report the error *exactly* where it happened, to be of
reasonable use to authors. In this case it failed to do that.

> Checking is not a substitute for learning and understanding.

Are you claiming that you've never made even one mistake in your
entire life? So a utility that checks for mistakes in your work is
totally worthless? No matter how much a human being learns and
understands, a human being occasionally makes yet another mistake.
I guess you're super-human and that never happens to you. Your
snobbish attitude (if one ever make even one mistake then that
person is an idiot who needs to learn more, rather than a human who
makes mistakes) is beginning to piss me off.

The classic idea that a person needs to learn everything that is
known by mankind before he's competant to get his first job stopped
being reasonable a few centuries ago. Nowadays, especially with the
Web available, the best approach is to learn the basic idea of a
discipline, then give it a try, and rely on error-checkers to point
out fine points that are urgent to learn next. There's probably not
one person alive today, not even you, who knows *everything* about
even one (1) field of study.

Interlude: My history of HTML: Circa 1994 was the first time my ISP
provided any Web browser that I could use on my VT100 dialup shell
account, namely lynx. So I started teaching myself HTML, then
converted my MaasInfo (toplevel meta-index to the InterNet) to HTML
format. Also I made some other new Web pages. But lacking direct
InterNet access I couldn't do anything dealing with images or
stylesheets, only plain vanilla HTML text. In mid-1998 I got an ad
for a free trial of AT&T WorldNet, so I gave it a try. It was
utterly horrible! It took 20 minutes just to download the default
homepage that AT&T forced me to always start with, and once that
was downloaded it took 5 minutes every time I clicked on the scroll
bar to move to the next screen among the already-downloaded Web
page. I tried downloading a NASA image of Mars, but after a hour of
downloading it had gotten only about one inch of the image at the
top of the screen downloaded. If, after waiting for the 20-minute
download of the AT&T home page, I the immediately entered the URL
of one of my own text-only Web pages, it wasn't horribly slow, but
I had to be careful *never* to click on any link to anything that
might have images and take another 20 minutes to download. Of
course I cancelled the service before the free month was finished,
but AT&T insisted on billing me for the second month, and refused
to totally retract the charges, and I refused to pay even the
reduced amount, so they cut off my long distance service, which has
remained cut off to this day. Anyway, I've been text-only at home
ever since.

Then in late 2000 I discovered my new ISP allowed users to set up
CGI, so in early 2001 I taught myself CGI and wrote a demo
application. Then 2.5 years ago I took a class at De Anza College
called "Web Design", which I thought would teach me the artistic
layout of Web pages. Nope, all it taught me were the technicalities
of CSS and embedded images and XHTML transitional (and it got the
latter fucking wrong, as I learned just today in this thread),
although I did get a hint a few months that XHTML transitional
might be all bunk, but today was the clincher. So during the 2
months of that class was the only time I ever had developmental
access to CSS and images etc. (At the public library I can view
other people's pretty Web pages, but they don't provide TELNET
access so there's no way I can connect to my shell account to edit
a Web page and then switch over to Mozilla to view my changes.)

End of interlude, back to thread.

> It would be an error to flag a valid document as erroneous.

On the other had, "transitional" means something that bridges the
gap between two slightly different systems, so if it flagged
something that was valid in SGML/HTML but not valid in XHTML/XML or
vice versa that would be very helpful.

My conclusion at this point is that there is *no* way to force a
line break in the middle of a paragraph without actually forcing a
full paragraph break which implies a **BLANK*LINE** between
paragraphs. If anybody knows a way, please tell.

> You might confuse the W3C validator with the WDG validator
> http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/
> which gives (and has given for years) a useful warning, even
> though this is strictly speaking outside the scope of a validator:

Aha, I tried that, and quickly got:

* Line 26, character 4:
<p />
^
Warning: net-enabling start-tag; possibly missing required quotes
around an attribute value
Will somebody please tell me what "net-enabled" means here??
In any case, it clearly shows me I shouldn't be doing that.

I clicked on the link for the p element:
The P element defines a paragraph. The closing tag for P is optional,
but its use prevents common browser bugs with style sheets. ...
What does "optional" mean??? The "Web Design" instructor emphasized
that every opening tag requires a matching (and properly nested)
closing tag. Only empty tags can stand alone.

* Line 81, character 55:
... keyword cited there.<br></br>
^
Error: end tag for element BR which is not open; try removing the
end tag or check for improper nesting of elements
It looks open to me, per XML/XHTML standards!! Clearly I'll have to
totally avoid the br element in my Web pages.

I clicked on the link for the br element:
The BR element forces a break in the current line of text. BR can be
useful in formatting addresses within the ADDRESS element, but it is
often misused to break lines of text in a paragraph or table cell when
it looks "nice" to the author.

OK, that's the clincher. Despite the fact just about everyone on
the net generates the br element to force line break in paragraphs
or other flowing text (implicit paragraphs), it's wrong!!!

* Line 86, character 45:
... t trust this as accurate.<br />
^
Warning: net-enabling start-tag; possibly missing required quotes
around an attribute value
What does "net-enabling" mean???

<br />&nbsp;<hr />
^
Warning: net-enabling start-tag; possibly missing required quotes
around an attribute value
How the fuck do I get a horizontal rule any more???
Omitting these will **RUIN** my Web page design!!

<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/HelloPlus/CookBook/CookTop.html>
The file now passes both validators, at the cost of looking like trash!!!
How to fix it???

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